FDR - Jean Edward Smith [410]
I have devoted more space than may be warranted to Sara’s renting the Draper house for Franklin and Eleanor because ER in her autobiography implies that she was surprised and put out by Sara’s action, which was made to appear the unilateral meddling of an overprotective mother-in-law. Eleanor’s letters from Europe suggest otherwise. Compare, Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 55 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961). Also see Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny 197 (New York: Putnam, 1972).
17. The houses are at 47–49 East Sixty-fifth Street. Sara’s 1908 journal entry indicates that the total price for the two houses, each 17½ feet wide, was $247,345.19 (roughly $5 million currently). The two lots cost $105,284.25; construction, painting, and papering, $134,554.84; and Mr. Platt’s architect fee, $7,506.10. Except for a small $26,000 mortgage on her own house at 49 E. Sixty-fifth, Sara paid cash. SDR Journal, 1908. FDRL. Also see James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America 108 (New York: Grove Press, 2001). In 2003, the City University of New York undertook to restore the houses for the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, at a cost of $15 million. The New York Times, March 18, 2003.
18. ER, Autobiography 61. Eleanor was not as divorced from the project as she later suggested. On August 22, 1907, she wrote Sara from Campobello, “Franklin and I have been working over the plans for lighting, bells, and telephones which [Charles A. Platt, the architect] sent us two days ago. All of the arrangements seem very good except in one or two bedrooms where I think he has made a mistake as one would want lights over dressing tables it seems to me and not in the four corners of the room.” 2 Roosevelt Letters 112.
19. For this early confrontation, I have relied on the treatment of ER’s friend and biographer Joseph P. Lash. Mr. Lash was privy to Mrs. Roosevelt’s thoughts and offers the most objective appraisal of the episode. See Eleanor and Franklin 162.
20. ER, Autobiography 61. “I pulled myself together and realized that I was acting like a little fool, but there was a good deal of truth in what I had said, for I was not developing any individual taste or initiative.”
21. ER interview with Arnold Michaelis, on the recording “A Recorded Portrait” (1958), FDRL.
22. ER, This Is My Story 162–163.
23. Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 40 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).
24. Horace Coon, Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson 99 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947).
25. ER, Autobiography 62.
26. Ibid. 57–60. Also see Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 178–180.
27. ER, This Is My Story 142–146.
28. James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 40 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).
29. John R. Boettiger, A Love in Shadow 62. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).
30. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 152.
31. 157 U.S. 429 (1894). Carter’s argument to the Court made few friends among his corporate clients. Granted, the income tax would fall upon only the nation’s wealthiest 2 percent, said Carter. “But that two percent received more than fifty percent of the country’s income. The rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of the few creates an inequitable situation that Congress has the right to correct.” Carter reminded the Court that its authority was limited and it would transgress those limits if it invalidated an act of Congress simply because the justices disagreed with the economic principles involved. Five justices disagreed, and the Court overturned the tax. Carter also represented the United States before the Tribunal of Arbitration in Paris in 1893, pertaining to sealing rights on the Pribilof Islands. Once asked by Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody of Harvard why he